User blog:Readerno33/Taking It Seriously No 2
Taking It Seriously No 2: “Swarm” (Spiderman and His Amazing Friends) Here’s entry number 2 in the Taking It Seriously series focused on the “Swarm” episode. “Swarm” as an episode with hypnosis/mind control in it functions differently than “The Pied Piper of New York Town.” I pointed out the problems with the story of “Pied Piper” that made it hard to take the episode seriously in my first entry; with “Swarm” there aren’t really any things like that in the story, which means I take the episode seriously. That is, what the episode proposes about Swarm and how the story proceeds I don’t really have a problem; where I start to question things is when I think about following the proposals the episode makes. To connect “Swarm” with other episodes on the Wiki, “Swarm” is part of the Transfo rmational Mind Control Episodes like “Attack of the Vampire” and “Voodoo Vampire” in Superfriends, “Skumm Lord” in Captain Planet, or “The Freaks Come Out at Night” in the 2003 TMNT Series. The villain transforms everyday humans into creatures like themselves and part of the transformation involves mind control that makes them the controlled masses of the boss villain. Swarm as the boss villain transforms everyday people into human bee drones who follow his commands and work for their new master. You can go here and read the summary, but here is the brief synopsis: A meteorite falls to earth with a radioactive blue core. The core draws bees from around the area and makes them into a humanoid entity called Swarm. Swarm begins to transform people into human drones “who work for Swarm.” First Firestar, t hen all the Spiderfriends try to stop Swarm, which leads to Iceman and Firestar becoming drones and fighting against Spiderman. Spiderman is able to undo the transformation by leading his friends into a lead room, which removes the radiation and returns them to normal. The Spiderfriends are able to get into Swarm’s hive, take the radioactive core, and shoot it back into space, undoing Swarm and returning all his drones to normal. Unlike, “Pied Piper,” there’s nothing wrong with the basic story; I have no problem with Swarm’s transformation, his conversion of people into his human drones, or the Spiderfriends’ victory over him. So, I take the basic story of the episode seriously; once I do that I begin to think about Swarm’s claim that “all will work for the universal hive” and that’s where questions that change how I view the episode arise. The two questions are: 1.) What do the human drones do in Swarm’s hive? And 2.) How would Swarm spread his control if he is bound to be near the radioactive meteorite core? Question #1: What do the human drones do in Swarm’s hive? I may sound like the girl in the Cascade commercial but it’s a question that comes out of Swarm’s own claim that he wants every human being to become a human drone and work in his hive. Okay, so what do the people you have made into drones do once they fly into your hive? We begin to see a possible answer to this question when the episode shows us human drones flying into Swarm’s hive; they seem to land on the cells of the hive. But what exactly are they doing? To answer that you must look at worker bees and what they do in the hive. Worker bees do a few things in the hive: 1.) they gather pollen and nectar; 2.) they seal honey up with wax; 3.) they pack up pollen in honey; 4.) they remove dead bees and larvae from the hive. But the signature task they carry out is nursing bees by first clearing out the brood cells, then nursing the larvae until they emerge as mature bees. This is what “Swarm” depicts the human drones doing as they land in cells; they are cleaning the cells for the larvae to gestate and become the large bees Swarm commands. Another task worker bees carry out is maintaining a constant temperature in the hive by fanning their wings if the temperature is too hot and gathering together to places that are colder than needed. They also bring water into the hive to help with the cooling of the hive. In this task, Iceman and Firestar as drones were a perfect addition to Swarm’s hive as the two could produce water between their powers; they also good for cleaning out the cells with their powers although they may increase/decrease the temperature were they to use their powers at this task. Worker bees also can guard the hive against intruders such as wasps, but with no real threats to Swarm’s hive, it’s hard to see human drones taking up this purpose. Although you might argue that the farmer drone fighting with Firestar and the scene where the farmer, Flash Thomspon, and Professor Wells stand before the entrance to the hive might be examples of drones acting as guards. (But I leave that up to you the reader.) So largely the human drones clean the cells of the hive and help in the breeding of the large bees. That fits with Swarm as an entity formed of bees to make humans into his work drones, but when you learn that’s what the human drones will do, it’s a bit of a letdown. Question #2: How can Swarm expand his hive if he can’t move far away from the radioactive core? This question comes about because of the end of the episode, mainly, the Spiderfriends defeating Swarm by shooting the core back into space. This means that Swarm wouldn’t have been able to go far away from the core, and yet he wanted to make all humans into drones working in his “universal hive.” So, is that possible? If so, how could he do it? Swarm’s tactic for increasing his number of human drones was to have his large bees go out, bring people to his hive, and transform them into drones. That may work on a local level but Swarm can’t bring people from further distances to the hive to make them into drones this way because at some point the bees might face exhaustion between the combination of the distance they must travel and the weight they must carry. The bees don’t have the power to transform people into drones; that’s reserved to Swarm and the human drones. Swarm could send his drones out but again the same problem emerges as eventually there will be a limit to how far the drones can travel from the hive and get back. So far Swarm’s ambitions for a universal hive are being thwarted by the nature of a bee. One possible solution may be to form a hive at the limit and make that the new point to expand Swarm’s range of control. This, however, runs into some problems. One is that a hive without a leader doesn’t appear in nature; the question is: Could Swarm’s human drones and bees function without him, especially with the drones operating on the premise that “Swarm is their master; they are workers who work from Swarm?” Another problem is the expansion could alert the authorities, who could perhaps repel Swarm’s drones from moving further. And with no leader, how effective would the drones be in countering the military response to their incursion? At best Swarm seems like he could’ve made hives at the edge of his mobility and send out as many bees as he could to bring people to become drones but nothing else. Even that tactic seems to run up against the distance problem again. Swarm might have been able to create a hive complex, but it doesn’t seem like he really could’ve made the entire world work for him and his drones. Swarm as a humanoid entity has an ambition that is tied to its bee instinct but doesn’t have the intellect to plan and organize how to carry that ambition out and make it a reality. Perhaps that is what leads to his defeat at the hands of the Spiderfriends. The story of “Swarm” is not problematic but there is one scene that I do have a problem with. When the Spiderfriends infiltrate Swarm’s hive they come in with a bunch of human drones who fly into the hive. The question that stands out is who turned all these people into drones. Swarm was in the hive and none of the human drones were sent out to make others into drones. The story needed these drones to serve as cover for the heroes, but these drones were created out of thin air. So, to wrap things up, “Swarm” is solid in the basic story, but when you follow the premises to logical conclusions it ends up letting you down a bit. All of Swarm’s human drones are just working to help him breed more large bees and nothing else; they don’t really operate beyond that. Part of that is because the bee structure demands it. The strength and weakness of the “Swarm” story is the fidelity it has to the bees and bee society. And with that, I’ll end this entry. Category:Blog posts